Subject: punk rocker

Culture: English, American youth

Setting: youth subculture, England/America 1970s-1980s

Event Photos

* Baudot 1999 p230

"[Punk] was born out of the unemployment that hit the British proletariat harder than the rest of Europe and once again, it spread through protest music. However, this time, the songs were the vehicle for a hatred that was more visceral than political. With their ripped T-shirts, Dr Martens, Red Indian hairstyles, bondage trousers and chains, the punks exported a general feeling of disgust around the globe. Fashion never discouraged and never tiring of being ripped off, dipped its toe even in these dangerous waters, seeking new sources of inspiration. Because of punk, London retained a considerable degree of influence over fashion, most notably in the boutiques of the Kings Road, where Vivienne Westwood's shop, opened in 1971, blew with the prevailing wind. Originally it sold Fifties clothes secondhand, as well as clothes inspired by that era, under the name Let It Rock. Before long, however, this temple of English iconoclasm concentrated on fetishistic accessories and ranges of clothing in which black rubber and steel studs were the outward signs of an underlying sadism. It was on exactly the right wavelength for a youth dedicated to the cult of the safety pin. At that time, the boutique was called Sex. As punk declined, it took the name World's End; it was indeed the end of a world that had been defined by those years of anti-fashion."

* Hebdige 1979 p28

"By the early 70s, these tendencies had begun to cohere into a fully fledged nihilist aesthetic and the emergence of this aesthetic together with its characteristic focal concerns (polymorphous, often wilfully [SIC] perverse sexuality, obsessive individualism, fragmented sense of self, etc.) generated a good deal of controversy amongst those interested in rock culture. From Jagger in Performance (Warner Bros, 1969) to Bowie a the 'thin white duke', the spectre of the dandy 'drowning in his own opera' has haunted rock from the wings as it were, and in the words of Ian Taylor and Dave Wall 'plays back the alienation of youth onto itself'. Punk represents the most recent phase in this process. In punk, alienation assumed an almost tangible quality. It could almost be grasped. It gave itself up to the cameras in 'blankness', the removal of expression (see any photograph of any punk group), the refusal to speak and be positioned. This trajectory -- the solipsism, the neurosis, the cosmetic rage -- had its origin in rock." [references omitted]

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Field Notes